I Relived My Child’s Birth in a Postpartum Dream

I gave birth fully sedated with no memory of the ordeal. Or so I thought.

Photo by engin akyurt on Unsplash

I have two children. I was delivered of my first child eight years ago via a lesser known procedure that sits between the two more popular options, namely vaginal birth or “normal spontaneous delivery” (with or without epidural) and birth by C-section or “caesarian delivery.” With birth by IV-sedation, I was completely sedated like I was going to have a C-section, but my unmedicated body, feeling the full brunt of contraction pain, pushed the baby out through the vaginal canal. As my OB-GYN had put it when she first explained the procedure to me, “your body will give birth to the baby while your mind peacefully sleeps.”

It was designed to be a completely painless procedure but without the prolonged and mostly painful post-surgical recovery of having had a C-section. It was essentially NSD without epidural, but — amazingly — painless.

Two of my friends who had given birth by IV-sedation raved about the procedure and referred me to their OB-GYN, who I immediately liked on the first meeting. I held no romantic notions of childbirth; cherishing the full experience of labor didn’t appeal to me, nor did the idea of being fully present or participative in it. As a working mother I was already…